Samar Sen

Education

Sen was a graduate of the Scottish Church College, at the University of Calcutta.

Early life and career

Sen's grandfather, Dinesh Chandra Sen, was a well-known writer and member of the Bangiya Sahitya Parishad. His father, Arun Sen, an academic, noted, "I am the son of an illustrious father and the father of an illustrious son!" Samar Sen, along with Subhash Mukhopadhyay, belonged to the second generation of modern Bengali poets. He gave up poetry fairly early, however, and devoted the better part of his later life to Marxist politics and journalism. He was the editor of the leftist newspaper ''Frontier'', published from Kolkata, which was banned during the period of the Indian Emergency (1975 -1977) declared by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.

Poetry

Samar Sen, like his poetic contemporaries, grew up under the gigantic impact of Rabindranath Tagore. Yet Sen was perhaps the first to 'break' with the lyrical romanticism of Tagore and introduce "modern" concerns (disenchantment, decadence, avant-garde urban perspectives) into Bengali verse. Through his work, the influence of French and English modernism was first translated into Bengali verse; at the same time, the convergence of modernism and Marxism was evident early on in his poetic thought and style. His poetry was somewhat over-shadowed by his very original journalism, produced while he served as editor of the legendary ''Frontier''. He was also known for his translations of Soviet literature; he spent nearly five years in Moscow working as a translator, although later in life he became doubtful about bureaucratic Communism. Samar Sen also edited the radical journal ''Now'', publishing a galaxy of prominent scholars and writers, including Joan Robinson and Satyajit Ray; his deputy editor was the playwright and actor Utpal Dutt. In his private life Sen was a man with a wry sense of humour, sometimes acerbic but often lethally accurate. He never regretted the sacrifice of what could have been a comfortable material life, supported by conventional measures of bourgeois success. His loyalty was always to the downtrodden. Some critics mourn his abandonment of poetry as a loss to Indian literature, reasoning that his acute perception and extraordinary command of languages would have continued to produce memorable verse of lasting significance. Sen decided, however, that poetry was a luxury in a world of gross deprivation and injustice and decided he would instead dedicate himself to agitating on behalf of the poor, regardless of the cost to himself. He remained committed to this cause for the rest of his life, despite experiencing significant poverty himself.

Samar Sen was founder-editor of the weekly magazine Frontier, first published in 1968.